News media face challenges, MSNBC chief tells local group

Wednesday

Nov 19, 2008 at 2:00 AM

POUGHKEEPSIE — Just when an MSNBC honcho thought the 2008 presidential election couldn't get any more interesting, a political unknown with a tart tongue, a winking eye and an Eskimo husband arrived on the scene.

JEREMIAH HORRIGAN

POUGHKEEPSIE — Just when he thought the 2008 presidential election couldn’t get any more interesting than the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton primary showdown, Phil Griffin cast his eyes northward. He could hardly believe his luck.There stood Sarah Palin, a former beauty queen with a tart tongue, a winking eye, and an Eskimo husband.“She made this election,” the president of MSNBC told about 200 students and faculty at Vassar College Tuesday night. “You couldn’t make this stuff up.”Griffin, who graduated from Vassar as an English major in 1979, talked about not only his view of the past election but about the parlous condition of traditional news media.He illustrated the sea change that’s occurred since his undergraduate days by asking how many people had seen Katie Couric’s Palin interview. About two-thirds of the audience raised their hands.“Now – how many watched that interview during its 6:30 news broadcast?”No one raised a hand.The Big Three of broadcast news are losing viewers, which means they’re losing advertising revenue, which means their ability to do the very expensive job of international and investigative journalism is under serious threat.“The traditional business model is dead and everyone in Big Media is freaked out.”But Griffin, who characterized MSNBC as being more in tune with the Internet-driven times than either CBS or ABC, wasn’t complaining. If these are the worst of times for the Big Media, he said, they’re also the best of times. Even as the old ways are dying, new ways are being born through the intersection new and old technology and the unchanging human desire for a good story.“There are hundreds of news outlets now. It’s a challenge, it’s going to be hard, it’ll probably involve mergers between news operations . . . but I’m an optimist. We’ll figure it out.”jhorrigan@th-record.com